It has long been accepted that 109 or so FTs were taken to the USA after the war. In the past, I've long been suspicious of that claim, on the grounds that production of the M1917, with its improvements over the FT, was beginning to take off, so there was no need for used and inferior FTs. Steve Zaloga told me the figure was more or less correct, and that the USA's attitude was that they had paid for the FTs, so they were taking them back home. "Parsimonious" was the excellent word he used.

However, Pascal Danjou's new book says the following:

"The 231 (FTs) delivered to the Americans formed a special category becaues they were all intended for combat on French battlefields. When the war ended, these armoured vehicles remained on French territory because by then American industry was producing it own tanks, including the Six Ton tank (sic) . . . Transporting the French-produced FTs to America, at considerable cost, did not therefore make sense." (p.7)

"The French Army would deliver 231 FT tanks to the Expeditionary Force which was to fight on French soil. None of these tanks would be transported to the United States, as in the interim the Americans had begun its (sic) tank production." (p.43)

And yet there are some genuine FTs in the US.

So who's right? What's the real story?

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Sorry, but Danjou is simply wrong. I finally found the main collection of Ordnance documents dealing with US tanks in the WWI period at NARA, and have been going through it slowly. Last week, I found one of the reports on the Six-Ton Tank program (undated, but roughly 1920) which indicated that the current holdings of Six-Ton Tanks in the US Army were 1,050 US manufactured Six Ton Tanks (526 with MG, 374 with 37mm, 50 radio tanks) and 213 "French built Six Ton Tanks" (92 with MG and 121 with 37mm guns). I have also been going through some of the period photos and attached here is one showing a bunch of Renault FT on a dock in the US after their delivery from France on April 7, 1919.

I have also found documents about a program to re-equip the French built tanks with US machine guns, as well as photos of Renault FT in the US.

I suspect that the reason there is so little information on the Renault FT in the US Army is that they went almost immediately into storage. I have a variety of reports on US Army operational tank strength in the early 1920s, and the total number of deployed tanks was usually around 500 which could be accommodated using the newly built Six-Ton Tanks. There are some documents at NARA on the whole issue of tanks in storage, so I'll have to take a look through those some time.

Wow. As Mr Norman Voles of Gravesend said, "This is where my claim falls to the ground."

That rather takes the shine off M. Danjou's book.

But at least it's great news that the documentation has come to light. I hope you'll share what turns up.

__________________

"Sometimes things that are not true are included in Wikipedia. While at first glance that may appear like a very great problem for Wikipedia, in reality is it not. In fact, it's a good thing." - Wikipedia.